Getting Started#

It is time to build a client library!

Using artman requires two concepts: (1) pointing to a artman configuration file, which tells artman what source material it is working off of, and (2) telling it what you want it to do.

Here is an example command:

# Right now, artman is location-aware; you need to be in the
# googleapis directory for everything to work correctly.
$ cd /path/to/googleapis/

# Build the language.v1 API library, and produce a Python client.
$ artman --config google/cloud/language/artman_language_v1.yaml \
    generate python_gapic

Unpacking that command:

  • The --config switch (which is actually required) tells artman what inputs to use. In this case, the configuration is for the Natural Language API.

    Note

    As of this writing, some artman YAML configs have a version at the end, and some do not. (We are moving in the direction of consistently having them.)

  • generate is the command / verb. (artman also supports publish, which is able to, for example, automatically create a pull request on GitHub.)

  • python_gapic is the objective – the thing you want to be produced. You essentially always want a GAPIC (an old code name for the complete, auto-generated API client), but seven languages are supported at this time; ruby_gapic, java_gapic, etc. will give you what you expect.

The package will be dropped in a newly created artman-genfiles/ directory within your current working directory; the output of the command will tell you precisely where it put the library.